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1) EvE is not anything like a dogfighting game. We fly big ships that have rotating turrets that track our targets.
We don't point our ships at things to shoot at them.

And EvE should stay that way.

BUT...

As it stands we are flying ships around in a 3d environment, And regardless of which way up a spaceship is...

If I want to [for example] fly around an asteroid, there should be no difference between me going around it in the plane
of the HUD... or perpendicular to it.

However as it is currently implemented in the game if I dive under the asteroid and then pull up to go around and over it and pass
back over the top, I will reach the point where I am pointing strait up and then continue that way.
I then have to perform some weird and kak-handed manoeuvre to rotate the ship so I can then bring the nose down in
the direction I want to go.

Because you don't permit the camera or the ship to ever be 'upside down'.

This is both unintuitive [bearing in mind that this is being done to make the new player experience MORE intuitive]
and deeply frustrating and unnecessary.

Allowing our ships to perform loops would in no way make this a dogfighting game.

It would however make flying much more intuitive and make getting in and out of tight spaces like asteroid belts
and some mission dungeons much easier.

You could [if you feel it necessary] still enforce a [this way is up] by having the ship model perform a roll if the manoeuvre it is performing puts it upside-down. If you have this happen [and match it with the follow camera] AFTER the completion of current manoeuvring [signalled by the release of the "keyboard Flight Controls" then you avoid the problem of the keys changing the command they are giving mid manoeuvre.


Also:
2) These changes bring something into sharp relief. The fuzzy over-large collision models.
It is deeply frustrating, AND unintuitive for new players, to head for what looks like a clear patch of space between
asteroids or pylons or other feature of stations and collide-able objects. And to smack into apparently empty space
as you hit the invisible collision models.

If anything could be done to make the collision models much more surface hugging, and/or visible.

For example:
A) stations [and ships] could have visible shields that follow the surface of their collision model making it visible but not game breaking or ugly.

B) Asteroids could have clouds of dust and rocks/pebbles around them that fill in the space encompassed by the collision models so we could visually see how close we can get to them. [same for big bits of space debris and collide-able objects that don't have shields]. This could also make them prettier... and it looks like you're planning doing something along these lines anyway...



An Upside of this would be to not only make the game more intuitive, but it would make practical more interesting space environments where flying inside structures and/or planetary rings or denser [larger] asteroid belts would be possible [in frigates/destroyers] without just getting frustrated beyond belief by constant collisions with invisible barriers.

And lets face it, EVERYONE has got stuck on an invisible barrier at some point when they were desperately trying to escape or close range or get to a friend who needs reps ect ect ect.

Fixing that would make the relevant dev's very popular.

I'll try to do something similar on my razor nostromo. Do you use the radial menu for warping, aligning etc?

Isn't that just a case of turning the tracking camera off and then selecting the camera angle that you want?


EDIT: There's also similar functionality in the advanced camera menu if that still is ingame (last time I looked for it I couldn't find the option to turn it on).

That's not it If you just turn tracking off, the camera stays facing at the direction you set with the mouse. If you then turn your ship around (let's say you're orbiting something) the camera still points at the same direction, but your ship turns around independently. It would be nice to allow it to turn while keeping the same direction relative to the ship.

As you mention the advanced camera menu, the functionalities available are "Set as interest" and "Set at parent". The former is where the tracking camera comes from, this tracks what you set it to look at, and doesn't lock the camera to the ship's heading. The latter provides a point of view set around any object, from the side where the camera is located when selecting "Set as interest", resulting in not always having a ship/structure in the middle of the screen.
Not sure I managed to explain this clearly.

Because no game is created perfect - and games which fail to change and enhance themselves with new features and mechanics are sure to be consigned to history.

Man this feature has garnered some interest :D

There are many ways that this could break the current mechanics; this I am also worried about. Needless to say it opens up more options, than otherwise not being included. Mostly WASD game players snuggling into the game quickly.

I agree with a bunch of other posters that the lack of setting a camera position/direction relative to any object static or moving, with reference to it's direction of travel (rather than to an object of interest) is rather debilitating not only from the chase point of view, but from trying to make pretty video clips to show off Eve to colleagues. Although the Eve travel guide has done a very good job (me thinks with help from the devs)

I also agree that changing the mechanic of tracking, enemies with automatic firing & tracking weapons will kill the game for the point & click vets. But as I said; this option being available opens up more than it stymies.

The current collision mechanics I presume will cause the most angst for those wishing to WASD, they already cause us point&clickers nightmares when speed tanking.

I too don't want a dog fighting game (Eve was never supposed to be, even from the feedback 10/11 years ago), but I do want the sandbox to reflect the skill of those available to shine within the environment.

There are many mechanics of Eve that need improvement, but it is like `Shane` walking on tissue paper; small changes can cause tearing. Options need to be opened for the Devs to work with; either way the sandbox(us) will determine the options usefulness. We can always shoot a monument again :D :D :D

Nope, I can't really work with the radial menu, I just point my mouse at a target (most of the time, a target on the overview but the game is getting better with showing me things in space) and either press D or click on warp, whatever my slow reflexes remember to do first.

Sadly my joystick is a bit old and lacks the number of buttons more modern ones have, so I had to leave the shortcuts for warping, docking, aligning and so forth unbound.

I feel like it's already a really good feature.
We tried some manual flying with slicers the other day on sisi, and oh my, it's so much fun. I feel like manual flying translates better of what I'm trying to do than doubleclicks. Kiting and trying to separate someone from their fleet is, and feels, so much better now.

This is pretty close to a "must have" to go along with manual flight control. Please look into it really really hard.

There are literally keybinds that say "Accelerate" and "Deaccelerate" in the same tab as the movement keys. These options have been in EVE for a long time.